An important update about Airbnb in Japan

The Housing Accommodation Business Act will come into effect on June 15th this year.

We will register with the Japan Tourism Agency (JTA), as required under the law, and help hosts comply with the law.

From June 15th, 2018 onwards, we will require hosts with listings in Japan to provide their relevant permit notification number/legal basis prior to listing on our platform.

You will be able to submit this required information starting from March 15th, 2018. We kindly ask that you prepare for notification in accordance with the Housing Accommodation Business Act.

Moving forward, we will continue to work with the Japanese government to promote responsible and sustainable frameworks for short-term rentals and home sharing. We are committed to providing full assistance to our hosts to help them understand how best to comply with these new laws through our various partnerships in Japan.

Please take this opportunity to find out more about Japanese laws relevant to hosting (Japanese version only). For instance, the revised Hotel Business Act will bring tougher penalties for unlicensed operators, and is expected to come into effect this year. Meanwhile, some municipalities are currently designing local ordinances of the Housing Accommodation Business Act, and you will need to comply with these local requirements as well.

If you are a resident in Japan, you may want to contact the Japan Legal Support Center (Houterasu), which provides multilingual legal information services available here.

We will continue to keep in touch with you and share more useful information in due course.